3 Social Recruiting Strategies that Reach College Students and Grads

Social media lets you find and connect with the next generation. Interns are an investment in their future and yours. Recent graduates complement your company roster. And both of them use at least one social channel on a regular basis.

Social recruiting strategies range from basic to sophisticated. Some recruiters post job ads and leave it at that. Some develop a dynamic program that links ads and content from channel to channel, building a wide audience that grows.

If you want to capture the attention of the newest group of young professionals, find them where they spend time and offer them something that no one else does.

#1: Develop a Social Community With Students and Recent Graduates

Where do your people spend the most time? It probably varies depending on your industry.

If you’re a creative company with an emphasis on graphics, design, and imagery, check out Pinterest and Instagram, recommends Smart Job Board. They recommend LinkedIn for professional-minded individuals.

Facebook and Twitter are mainstays for recruiting college gradsin nearly every industry. Who doesn’t use one or both of them? And for this young crowd that you’re trying to attract, think about Snapchat and Tumblr.

Once you’ve found the home where college students and recent graduates hang out, it’s time to develop a community. Facebook and LinkedIn make it simpler than any other major social media platform.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have an option for groups, which Smart Job Board says brings in “free traffic.” Open a new group for your job board or company and start sourcing people within each social channel to invite. Post within the group, and Maximize Social Business says to use searchable hashtags to help candidates find you. If you’re not sure, perform a search to find what’s trending.

You can also jumpstart a new social media group by joining groups that already exist. Search “jobs” and relevant terms for your industry to find groups where you might fit in.

#2: Share Relevant Content That Gets Views and Shares

Once your groups are off the ground, what next? You have their attention, so put it to good use with relevant posts that get shares. Shares equal attention and attention drives more people to your job board.

Would you share a job offer that you found on social media? Not if you wanted to get the job. So while job postings are important, don’t expect any of them to go viral. College students and graduates looking for an internship or a first job might be less inclined to share than anyone else if they believe internships and good entry-level jobs are competitive.

Instead, post relevant, meaningful content. If you blog, and you should, share every blog post in your social media groups and throughout other social channels. Remember that social media recruitingrelies on hashtags to make posts searchable.

You don’t need to hog the spotlight, either. If you find content elsewhere that interests your followers, share that, too. In time, you’ll be known as a trustworthy source. You’ll build relationships. And that’s the beginning of a thriving talent pipeline.

#3: Use Social Channels to Boost Your Job Board Ads

If job ads perform poorly on social media, how can social help your job board? That’s easy: content wins again.

Content gets shared, but viewers probably land at your blog. That’s a start. The next step is following through to the job board. For that, you need a hook in the content to hold attention, a clear and strong call to action and a simple, direct path to get there.

The average attention span of an online reader seems to get shorter every day. If you don’t hook them in the first few seconds, you might lose them forever. But if you snag them, you can carry them on to the next step, which is the call to action such as, “Click here to find a great internship!”

Don’t neglect posting job ads, especially once you have a thriving community. The process should be as simple as possible for your audience. Job ads capture the attention of people who are interested. But with content, you’ll capture the attention of a wider audience and drive in more casually interested people.

Students who aren’t looking for a job might want an internship. Recent grads might not realize that a top company like yours is interested in what they can bring to the table. Using social media to recruit, you can help your interests and theirs at the same time.

Young college students are recent graduates are the workforce of tomorrow. Find them now, and both of you can reap the rewards of a great relationship.

Carole Oldroyd is a writer and graphic artist living in East Tennessee. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, LegalZoom, and numerous other magazines, websites and blogs. When she isn’t writing, she can be found restoring her historic Victorian home piece by piece.

About Carole Oldroyd

Carole Oldroyd is a writer and graphic artist living in East Tennessee. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, LegalZoom, and numerous other magazines, websites and blogs. When she isn’t writing, she can be found restoring her historic Victorian home piece by piece.